4 research outputs found
The acheulean handaxe: More like a bird's song than a beatles' tune?
The goal of this paper is to provoke debate about the nature of an
iconic artifact— the Acheulean handaxe. Specifically, we want to initiate a
conversation about whether or not they are cultural objects. The vast majority
of archeologists assume that the behaviors involved in the production of
handaxes were acquired by social learning and that handaxes are therefore
cultural. We will argue that this assumption is not warranted on the basis of
the available evidence and that an alternative hypothesis should be given
serious consideration. This alternative hypothesis is that the form of
Acheulean handaxes was at least partly under genetic control